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The Divide · Book 1 ↗The Hollow Man
Some lies are meant to be believed. Others feel a little more like invitations.
Mars Vey has barely earned her Warden badge when a murder delivers exactly the kind of answer the city wants. Unfortunately for everyone hoping to close the case, Mars has never been especially good at leaving a question alone.
Then there's Elias Rook: measured, maddeningly difficult to read, and far too comfortable with silence. He wants her to slow down. She wants him to tell her what he's thinking. Neither of them seems inclined to give the other the satisfaction.
Behind the city's respectable faces, older promises are coming undone. Every step toward the truth brings Mars closer to someone she might trust, someone she probably shouldn't, and the unsettling possibility that those are the same person.
The Hollow Man begins The Divide, a dark fantasy mystery where trust is dangerous, curiosity is personal, and attraction has terrible timing.
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Chapter One · An Excerpt
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The Hollow Man
Chapter 1: The Bell and Bone
The man sitting across from Mars had lied to her four times in the past minute. That wasn’t what offended her. People lied all the time about their jobs, their relationships, their fears, even about getting out of bed every morning because without some type of delusion they wouldn’t even have a reason for getting up. Mars didn’t hate lies. A well put-together lie could tell you more about a person than any truth they could tell.
Her problem was how bad at it he was.
Every time he lied, he gave a faint, nervous smirk. A slight twitch in his lip.
He said he hadn’t been inside the Bell and Bone the previous night.
Twitch.
He said he didn’t know a man named Merek Cole.
A laugh followed the twitch this time. Mars laughed with him.
He said he would never handle Void contraband.
Twitch.
Then he looked her in the face and told her he’d never seen her before.
Twitch.
That one was insulting, since Mars had been here a couple of nights ago while he sat complaining about the price of imported Void liquor, the weakness of modern men, and a woman named Seraphina who apparently ruined his life by not sleeping with him anymore.
He was thick in the shoulders with a soft belly and big, rough hands. His face said he’d been drinking his life away since Seraphina had left. Somewhere in his forties, particularly hairy, with a faded tattoo disappearing down his brown work sleeve. He looked like he might have been handsome ten or twenty years ago—not beautiful, but the kind of guy who let women enjoying him carrying heavy things go to his head. He just had a natural decline from comfortability and lack of discipline.
“You’ve really never seen me before?” she asked.
“Nope.”
Twitch.